Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Iain Martin's FT Watch

Iain Martin's new blog on the WSJ site is fast becoming unmissable. He has launched a one man campaign to hold the Financial Times to account for its apparent anti-Tory bias. Read THIS fisking of their analysis of George Osborne's speech on Monday. Very entertaining. And if you haven't bookmarked his blog so far, now's the time to do it.

25 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The Financial Times is a very left-wing pro-Labour paper these days. It is only mildly less batty than the Guardian. It is also extremely boring and smug. A free-market, pro-business alternative is well worth support.

I never thought I would live in a world where the Tories were criticising the house newspaper of city capitalism for being too left wing. Does that not worry you a bit? You know, in terms of your connection with the political mainstream?

That's not a particularly good fisk seeing as it basically boils down to criticising the FT for having the audacity to report on widespread unease at Osborne's experience & judgement. Apparently this is the first time Mr Martin has seen an anonymous quote in a newspaper article as well, if you were a City big-wig would you go on record to criticise the man who could shortly be Chancellor? I think you'll find the reason the FT seems to lean to the govt rather than the Tories is becasue on one side you have economically literate politicans who are following the correct path to tackle the recession (i.e. a temporary increase in govt spending to weather the storm - something all other countries that can afford it agree on) whilst on the other you have George Osborne coming out with populist banker-bashing measures that don't actually tackle anything or making fatuous comparisons between the public finances & personal finances & trying to scare pple into thinking the UK is on the brink of bankruptcy. I don't what is more scary, that Osborne - a man who aspires to run the country's finances - would actually be willing to talk down the economy just to further his political ambition, or that he actually believes half of the nonsense that spouts from his cake-hole. But no .. on second thoughts I forgot that the Tories can do no wrong so it must be some big anti-conservative conspiracy, thank God we've got a Tory lickspittle in a Murdoch-owned publication to set us straight.

I don't suppose that it could be the FT has reasoned economic doubts about young George's 1930s-type approach to the recession? Why no, of course not. It has to be because they are all pinkos. Look closely at the tint of the paper itself - what colour is it? Well, then.

Osborne (aka the shallow chancellor) is the biggest bar to a Tory landslide. A lightweight who never got over the "new money oik" moniker that made him a tagalong of the powerful from childhood onwards.

"Osborne (aka the shallow chancellor) is the biggest bar to a Tory landslide. A lightweight who never got over the "new money oik" moniker that made him a tagalong of the powerful from childhood onwards."

In what way can Osborne possibly be teased for being "new money" when he will be the 18th Baronet Osborne, a title dating back to 1629.

As someone who works in the City, I agree that the FT has tended to support the Labour Party - from their widely criticised decision to support Kinnock in 1992 onwards. So it's hardly news in that respect.

But in this case Iain Martin is barking up the wrong tree. This is a report of criticism of Osborne from the right (i.e. people in favour of the private sector and incentives - remember them?)and you can be dead sure that most of the City view this £2,000 max cash bonus idea as juvenile and just playing politics. I certainly do, even though, unlike the FT, I support his broad ecnomic policy over the Government's.

Anyone with any knowledge of the banks, or senior executive remuneration generally, can see that his idea is piffle (along with those with knowledge of banking who know that shortage of cash in the banks is not the reason they aren't lending as much as the Government would like).

The pity is that GO's chances of being taken more seriously on economic policy (which, despite this, gradually he is) is put back every time he plays to the gallery on bonuses. One wonders whether (or from whom) he is getting advice on this or does he just shoot from the hip based on focus groups and opinion polls?